Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 121
• Total blog posts published: 812

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 6/28/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Reread The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout, a framework for thinking about marketing that describes 22 foundational marketing laws

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred twenty-six was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from. This week, I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Focusing downside lets you play offense in down markets – YouTube interview with Seth Klarman, CEO of Baupost Group. Klarman joined Baupost at the age of 25 when it was being formed. He owned no equity, but seven years later, he was CEO and owned 40% of the firm. Klarman believes that focusing on risk and a bottom-up approach puts you in a position to be aggressive and play offense when others are panicking. In about three months, he raised roughly $4 billion as the great financial crisis hit, and his firm was a big buyer, deploying $100 million per day across various asset classes!
• The next generation of market wizards – YouTube interview with Jack D. Schwager, author of the Market Wizards series of books. I love learning about the strategies of people who’ve achieved outsized success, so I’ve enjoyed Schwager’s books because that’s what they’re about. He just released a new book, which I bought, that explains how some people, mostly working from their homes, generated astronomical sums over roughly a decade. For example, one person went from around $50,000 to over $500 million in about a dozen years working from home. Schwager won’t write about someone until he verifies their results through account statements and tax returns, which adds lots of credibility to his books. One of the interesting things I picked up on in this latest book was the power of compounding. Key to the success of these people is sticking with their winners long enough to enjoy compounding while cutting losers so the losses don’t impact their overall compounding. This is a common theme I’ve seen before that leads to power-law results for venture capital and other famous public market investors.
• She has to spend +$200k/month – YouTube interview with Anne Mahlum, an entrepreneur who sold her business to private equity. This interview was interesting because she’s transparent about her $100+ million net worth and how it’s invested. She has to remind herself to spend enough money some months, and in some months spends $400,000 without impacting her overall wealth at all. Her experiences with family members made sense. Gifting her husband a substantial amount of money before they got married to avoid fights about money was unconventional but has worked well for her.

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.

Last week, I heard about how one extremely successful person grades himself daily in a write-up. He calls it his one-page daily report card. At the beginning of the day, he records what he plans to do and how he decided on his plans. At the end of the day, he records what he actually did, any mistakes or errors, and what he learned. He also breaks down his day into two-hour blocks and grades each block.

This really stuck with me and got me thinking. For one thing, it aligns with my having positive outcomes from daily habits (e.g., this blog).

So, this past week, I decided to copy that idea. I created a Google Doc that’s basically a journal of daily report cards. I create my plan for the day in the morning, and at 5-ish, I reflect and grade my day.

It’s only been a week, but so far I like this habit. I have a clear idea of what I want the day to look like, and I’m forced to look for and document mistakes and micro lessons. I also like grading each two-hour block. I noticed what appear to be some early patterns that I might not have noticed otherwise.

I’m looking at this as a week-by-week commitment for now. I’ll reflect at the end of each week to decide whether I want to keep going. After this first week, I’m looking forward to doing it again next week.

I had a great conversation with my mom this week, and we talked about my childhood. Mom was an educator her entire career and has been an avid reader her whole life. She knows the value of reading in learning and child development and made sure that reading was part of my childhood routine. I'm thankful she prioritized this for me.

During our chat, she mentioned that despite her efforts, I hated reading as a child and adolescent. I did the assigned reading, but I made my dislike of it known. I told her it wasn’t the act of reading I didn’t like. The problem was that I was forced to read things that weren’t tailored to me or my interests, which felt like torture for two reasons.

First, I didn’t have control. Even as a child, I didn’t want people telling me what to do, especially things I hated doing. This is still true today. I want to drive the direction and outcomes of my life rather than let life happen to me.

Second, it’s difficult for me to do things that I have no interest in doing. I wasn’t interested in learning about Huckleberry Finn or whatever book my school wanted me to read, so it was hard for me to do it.

Combine those two issues and you have a child who hates reading and is vocal about it. Given that I love to read now, I’ll bet that if my teachers had taken time to understand my interests and let me pick books about those topics, I would have loved reading and read more than was assigned to me.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 120
• Total blog posts published: 805

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 6/21/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner, a framework book about avoiding errors when making decisions in complex situations. Dorner argues that narrow, linear thinking styles are used in dynamic and interconnected situations, which results in errors. He uses simulated situations to describe a process that helps improve decision-making in complex situations.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred twenty-five was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from. This week, I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• Microsoft on turning human know-how into balance sheet IP – YouTube interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Interesting to hear that he views Microsoft’s job in the AI era as building an ecosystem that enables more value to be created by others on top of Microsoft’s platform. He thinks the goal is to help others create their own AI using his platform. His views around IP being generated by capturing know-how from human capital and feeding it back into a custom model for a company stuck with me. He thinks that adding that IP to the balance sheet is now feasible because, for the first time, the know-how that resides in the heads of workers can be captured and made available throughout the entire organization. His idea that the margin of victory among high performers is small stuck with me and reminded me of power law outcomes.
• Ex-Goldman CEO is a day trader in retirement – YouTube interview with Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs. I had no idea that he grew up poor in the Brooklyn projects, which drove him to succeed. He acknowledged timing and random luck and how they played a huge role in his being offered the CEO role. I also found it interesting that as a retiree, he is now an avid day trader with a huge chunk of his wealth in risky assets.
• Why Ponce City Market and Chelsea Market thrive – YouTube interview with Matt Bronfman, CEO of real estate developer Jamestown, the developer of Ponce City Market and Chelsea Market. I had no idea that most of the money for Jamestown comes from mom and pop investors in Germany. Jamestown is basically raising money from German retail investors who wanted to diversify out of their national currency. The company raises a new fund every year or two and is currently raising its 33rd fund. They started by acquiring and operating developments with tenants such as Walmart. Then they decided they needed to get out of the commodity real estate business and begin creating unique spaces that differentiate them from competitors and that make tenants’ employees excited to go to work.

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 119
• Total blog posts published: 798

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 6/14/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Reread Think Twice by Michael Mauboussin. This is a framework book about improving decision-making in complex and uncertain environments by recognizing and avoiding common mental mistakes.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred twenty-four was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from. This week, I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• From veterinarian to investing billions and beating the S&P for decades – YouTube interview with Chris Davis of Davis Funds, a Berkshire Hathaway board member. I read a book about his family and always enjoy his interviews. Great info on how he thinks about executing his value-investing strategy in today’s AI environment. The average earnings multiple of his portfolio is 14x, which is much lower than the current market multiple. His biggest mistakes were around selling great companies too early. He bought Amazon around 2002 and sold it in 2004. Culture is also one of the biggest things he considers when he evaluates a financial company.  

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and investors and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 118
• Total blog posts published: 791

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 6/7/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries and Laura Ries. This is a framework marketing book that describes the 22 core principles of branding. It distills the truths that make effective branding work and gives examples of brands that have adhered to, and that have broken, each of the 22 laws.

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred twenty-three was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Continuing with my new protocol, here I’m going to share content I consumed and learned from. This week, I spent time doing general learning about a variety of topics.

What I consumed this week and what I learned from it:

• The learning science on how to become an expert – YouTube interview with Joe Liemandt, founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital. Joe is reinventing K-12 education as the principal of Alpha School, an AI-driven teaching program and school. Joe shared that their students spend only two hours a day learning and the rest of the day engaging in other activities such as sports, yet they learn ten times faster than in traditional school. Learning science combined with generative AI allows kids to learn in two hours what normally takes six hours, plus homework. The first hour is spent reading to become an expert on a topic. The second hour is spent summarizing what they’ve read. This works because it leverages the learning science “depth of knowledge” concept, a hierarchy that Liemandt described as follows:
  
  • Level 1 – Do you know facts
  • Level 2 – Can you summarize the facts
  • Level 3 – Can you look at summaries and facts to identify new insights
  • Level 4 – Creating new insights that other people don’t have

        Reading and summarizing help students reach levels 1–3, allowing them to learn much faster.

That’s what I learned from what I consumed last week.